


Knowing How

by thatnerdtori



Series: If I Got You - 100 Themes Challenge [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Amnesia, Angst, Bucky Angst, Bucky Barnes Feels, Drabble, Gen, Memories, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, could be pre-slash, post-winter soldier bucky
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-07
Updated: 2014-05-07
Packaged: 2018-01-23 21:33:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1580303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatnerdtori/pseuds/thatnerdtori
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"There were things Bucky remembered."</p><p>Finals Week Fic #1</p>
            </blockquote>





	Knowing How

**Author's Note:**

> It's finals week. My last ever finals week. Naturally, I have about 60 pages of writing to do before I'm allowed to graduate. I've been lovingly locked out of Facebook and Tumblr by my boyfriend so the only thing I have to do while I take short breaks from essay-writing is write Stucky drabbles/one-shots to let off steam.
> 
> I found a list of 100 one or two word prompts (http://kathrineroid.wordpress.com/2011/09/25/100-themes-challenge-writing-prompts/) and a random number generator. This is the first fic. The prompt was #40, "knowing how", just like the title says. I'll probably retain that format for the rest of these.
> 
> These will (probably) not be beta read and will almost certainly be posted sporadically and at obscene hours of the morning.

There were things Bucky remembered.

Three months into what everyone insisted on calling his “recovery”, there were some things that the man who had been born James Buchanan Barnes knew for certain.

He knew, for instance, that that was his name. 

He knew that he was often called Bucky, particularly by Steve Rogers. 

He knew who Steve was. 

He knew who he was in a way that extended beyond what he could read on the walls of a museum or by searching online. He _remembered_ him. Not entirely, not by a long shot. Memories continued to return to him in fits and starts, often fragmented. But it was good enough for Steve, who smiled like Bucky had brought back sunshine every time he mentioned something from their past, however small. 

He remembered being twelve years old and breaking someone’s nose for the first time because they’d pushed Steve into the dirt. 

He remembered being 17 and getting Steve his first date with the sister of the dame he was seeing at the time. 

He remembered being 20 and freezing and hungry and, more importantly, terrified, because Steve was wheezing and coughing and nothing seemed to be making it better and they didn’t have money for a doctor right now. 

He remembered, so clearly it was almost painful, the look on Steve’s face when he found him, the first time, strapped to Zola’s table. 

Bucky remembered with fierce clarity that Steve Rogers was, always had been, the most important person in his life. There were a thousand other things he didn’t remember. 

They (doctors, scientists, Sam Wilson) said there were things he’d need to relearn. They said it calmly and casually as though the sudden realization that he no longer knew how to make a pot of coffee was not horrifying, sickening.

Finding that he no longer knew what Coca Cola tasted like had been almost amusing. As Steve had said, the stuff tasted totally different nowadays, anyway. 

Not knowing how to use the can opener in Steve’s small kitchen had been frustrating, made him feel like a moron. 

He didn’t know when he needed to sleep, that was an ongoing problem. He was conditioned to a life where he was taken out to do his job and put away when it was done. This upset Steve, worried him terribly. It only made Bucky absently wonder if he still qualified as a human. 

The day Steve had taken him out to lunch and he realized he no longer knew how to order food, talk to a waitress, he’d almost left and gone to ground again. A life without hot meals and showers, clean cotton tshirts, television, and readily available coffee would be worth it if it meant he could avoid thinking and feeling like this. 

There was one morning where he had, all at once, forgotten how to tie a pair of running shoes and Steve had found him, slumped against a wall and weeping. 

_“What’s the point?”_ he had said, and he’d meant it. 

Steve had the patience of a saint. This was nothing new, he’d always been remarkably patient as though specifically designed to counter Bucky’s own impulsiveness, but now he was coping with amnesia, fear, and near-madness instead of a tendency to flirt with the wrong girl at a dance hall. Somehow, he took it all in stride, never once got frustrated. If he refused to go somewhere because it was too tight, too confined, had bad sightlines, Steve made other plans. If he didn’t speak for days because he was too caught up in his own head, Steve gave him the space he needed. All that, and he still found it in him to smile and joke on his good days. 

Bucky didn’t know how to walk around in public without counting everyone as a possible threat. He didn’t know how to make a bed and he didn’t know how to dance. 

He did, however, know that if he brought up the time they’d slid almost the entire way back to their apartment on their asses because the sidewalks were so icy one winter, Steve would laugh. He knew that if he called him a punk, Steve would give him a look that could have melted that damn ice cube he’d been stuck in. He knew how to make Steve Rogers smile, and that was enough for now.


End file.
